A 100 Km CERN Collider Aims To Find Origin Of Universe At Cost Of ?1.8 Lakh Crore

CERN, the European research organisation that currently operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, has decided to take up another mammoth scientific project under its wings. The new project is a 100-kilometre long machine that will possibly uncover the secrets of the universe, specifically those of Higgs Boson.

The CERN Council unanimously endorsed the decision for a super-collider on 19 June. The super machine is meant to collide electrons with their antimatter partners, positrons. To be built in an underground tunnel near CERN¡¯s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the super-collider is expected to be operational by the middle of the century.

Once completed, the super-collider will be a successor to the CERN¡¯s world famous scientific project - the Large Hadron Collider. If you recall, this is the same collider that raised the false fear of the earth being destroyed upon conducting experiments in it. The Earth is still intact and thanks to the collider, Fran?ois Englert and Peter Higgs now have a Nobel Prize in physics.

Unified decision

Large Hadron Collider (Image: CERN)

Till now, there had been varying ideas at CERN for the successor of the Large Hadron Collider. With the decision zeroed down to the super-collider, CERN Council has now made a unanimous statement.

¡°This is a major step, to get the countries of Europe to say ¡®Yes, this is what we would like to happen¡¯,¡± says Llewellyn-Smith, a physicist at the University of Oxford, UK, as quoted in a report by Nature.

Though the approval does not mean a final go-ahead for the project, it certainly does narrow down the efforts to be made next. CERN can now singularly focus on designing the planned collider and researching its feasibility. Meanwhile, all alternative options as possible projects can now be discarded.

¡°I think it¡¯s a historic day for CERN and particle physics, in Europe and beyond,¡± CERN director-general Fabiola Gianotti said after the council vote.

The plan

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel during the second long shutdown (LS2). (Image: CERN)

European Strategy for Particle Physics Update, the document highlighting the approval for the project, also mentions the two stages of development of the collider. First, CERN would build an electron-positron collider to understand the Higgs Boson in detail. In the latter half of the century, the machine would be dismantled and a proton-proton collider would be built instead.

The new machine thus built, is projected to reach collision energies of 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV). In comparison, the Large Hadron Collider, currently the most powerful accelerator in the world, attains 16 TeV of collision energy while colliding protons.

The goal

There are two broad goals to be achieved through the experiment.

In its first phase, the collider is meant to smash electrons with positrons. For this, the collision energies will be tuned as such to maximize the production of Higgs Bosons. With such a production of Higgs Boson, the collider will operate as a "Higgs Factory". Scientists will then be able to study the elusive Higgs Boson particle in detail.

British scientist Peter Higgs poses in front of a photographic image of the Atlas detector at the Science Museum in London (Image: Reuters)

For those unaware, Higgs Boson is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. The particle is associated with the Higgs field, which is an energy field responsible for providing mass to the things that travel through it.

Back in 1964, Peter Higgs, Francois Englert and their team theorised the Higgs field. The theory was an instant missing link for the known Standard Model of particle physics. While the Standard Model was able to explain the existence of photon and the W and Z bosons, it never had an answer to why these particles (and eventually everything they conjoin to form) have masses.

The Higgs field explained this, both for the rudimentary particles as well as for the entire universe ¨C stars, planets and everything in the observable universe. The theory even fit in with the Big Bang Theory and is the most widely regarded explanation of the origin of the universe. So it is no wonder that when the Large Hadron Collider was able to discover Higgs Boson, it came to be the biggest scientific discovery of the century!

As for the second goal, a proton-proton collider would be built to search for new particles or forces of nature that humans do not know of yet, possibly expanding or replacing the current standard model of particle physics. The technology for such a machine is yet to be studied though.

Worth the bill?

The ALICE experiment detector being renovated for the next run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (Image: CERN)

CERN plans to begin the construction of the supercollider by 2038. But the project would not be possible with the existing sources of funds for CERN. Expected to cost at least €21 billion (Rs 1.8 lakh crore), CERN will need global help to fund the project.

Such an exorbitant cost always raises the question of the viability and potential of the project. Even within the physics community, not all scientists are supporting the project.

Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany, is quoted by Nature, saying ¡°I still think it¡¯s not a good idea. We¡¯re talking about tens of billions. I just think there is not enough scientific potential in doing that kind of study right now.¡±

¡°We don¡¯t have an equivalent, rock-solid prediction now ¡ª and that makes knowing where and how to look for answers more challenging and higher risk,¡± says Tara Shears, a physicist at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Both the scientists have valid concerns around the project. What is to be discovered through the super-collider is nothing but more properties of a particle that still eludes physicists. Even if the scientists are able to do so, how would the resulting knowledge benefit our understanding of the universe is a matter yet unknown.

Then again, what is yet unknown will remain so if not for such never-seen-before experiments. So even though the results are not guaranteed to be monumental (at least yet), we know the super-collider to be the only way to increase our knowledge of particle physics. In this pursuit, who knows if we might actually stumble upon something substantial?